Nintendo Announces Skylanders-Like NFC Figurine Platform

Nintendo has decided to throw Mario, Link and the rest of its famous characters against the likes of Disney Infinity and Skylanders with its own merging of video games and action figures.

At Nintendo's latest Financial Results Briefing, president Satoru Iwata announced that his company will be unveiling an NFC-based (near field communication) product line of figures, called NFP (which stands for both "Nintendo Figure Platform" and "NFC Featured Platform"). NFC technology is already in use with the immensely popular Skylanders series and Disney Infinity, but the recognizable faces of Nintendo's characters mixed with its preexisting fan base could prove to help it take first place in this niche market. The Wii U already supports the ability to read/write onto these NFP figures due to the capabilities of the system's NFC on its GamePad.

Nintendo is planning to launch the NFP program in Q4 2014. An infrared-based Nintendo 3DS NFC reader will be coming out in 2015 for 3DS users to be able to interact with these figures as well. We can't wait to see what Nintendo does with this technology, but here's what we want the most: Pokemon (Rumble U doesn't count). If Nintendo was to release dozens of our favorite Pokemon in NFP form and have integrated them into the upcoming Alpha Sapphire/Omega Ruby games, we'd buy them all.